Design Systems · UX Strategy · Enterprise Scale
Enterprise UX & Design System - Investment Advisor Digital Platform
Client
Enterprise Wealth Management Institution
A scalable UX and design foundation supporting hundreds of advisor websites. Improved consistency, usability, and accessibility across the platform. Increased client and prospect engagement through contact forms, email, and appointment requests. Clear governance model balancing personalization and brand control. A future-ready system capable of evolving with new tools, content, and advisor needs.
Role
Head of Design Direction & UX Strategy. Defined UX and design strategy across the advisor platform. Led design system vision, structure, and adoption. Partnered with brand, UX research, product, engineering, compliance, and external vendors. Set art direction, content strategy principles, and experience standards. Balanced advisor flexibility with enterprise governance.
The Challenge
The organization operated hundreds of advisor websites built over time with inconsistent design, outdated patterns, and fragmented content. While advisors relied on these sites for credibility and lead generation, the experience no longer met modern user expectations or accessibility standards. Key challenges included: inconsistent visual language and UX patterns across sites, dated design styles and low-quality imagery, missing or unstructured content, limited flexibility for advisors to personalize their presence, poor navigation and unclear calls to action, and complex compliance and governance requirements. The platform needed to scale across multiple advisor segments while maintaining brand integrity and trust.
Strategic Focus
The strategy focused on clarity, trust, and scalability. Primary research included a quantitative survey with 50 participants to understand expectations and behaviours on investment advisor websites, plus qualitative interviews with internal stakeholders. Key insights: users value clarity, trust, and transparency over novelty; navigation via menus is preferred over search; fees, credentials, and advisor expertise must be easy to find; educational content significantly increases credibility; and mobile experience is critical. Competitive research revealed strong first impressions driven by bold hero sections, immediate visibility of benefits and CTAs, increasingly human-centered visual language, short focused pages, and clear separation between education and contact actions. UX principles: mobile-first by default, clean intuitive information architecture, accessibility baked into components, meaningful well-governed calls to action, and modular components allowing controlled customization.
The Solution
Developed a comprehensive design system to support hundreds of advisor websites while maintaining brand consistency. System foundations included: core layout patterns and responsive grids, flexible component library with locked and customizable elements, defined typography hierarchy and color usage, accessibility-compliant interaction patterns, and usage guidelines with governance documentation. Mandatory components ensured consistency across all sites: About/Team, Services, and Contact information. Content strategy prioritized: clear value propositions tailored to advisor specialties, credible advisor bios, educational resources, client stories where permitted, and strong well-placed CTAs. Art direction established a professional yet approachable tone with lifestyle-driven imagery, consistent photography standards, simplified iconography, and minimalist layouts with strong typography and white space.
Impact
A scalable UX and design foundation supporting hundreds of advisor websites. Improved consistency, usability, and accessibility across the platform. Increased client and prospect engagement through contact forms, email, and appointment requests. Clear governance model balancing personalization and brand control. A future-ready system capable of evolving with new tools, content, and advisor needs.
